History as a predictor of present and future conduct

The Friday Flash Points

When the past haunts the present

I was horrified to scroll down my social media timeline last night and stumble across this picture of law enforcement officers and K-9 units with captured bank robbery suspect Eric Boykin, a Black man.

My horror stems from the fact that an inter-agency “manhunt” coordinated by the ATF, FBI, Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Mississippi Department of Corrections, the Louisiana State Prison System K-9 team, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, and the Columbia Police Department was conducted by officers who did not have enough common sense, good judgment, or human decency to realize everything that is wrong with posing with a shirtless, unkempt Black man like they were posing with a dead 12-pt buck deer during hunting season. 

I am willing to wager that each one of the officers in the photo learned little to nothing at all about slave patrollers using dogs to hunt down Blacks who had escaped plantations in search for freedom. A practice that was legion before 1850, but one that became a lucrative profession after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law as per the infamous Compromise of 1850, one that delayed the start of the U.S. Civil War by a decade. 

Thus my continued call for a full accounting of American history, from elementary through high school, in this modern era when conservatives are loudly pushing to keep the truth out of classrooms by misinterpreting "Critical Race Theory" and twisting it in Orwellian form to claim that telling the truth about white American racial atrocities is akin to being racist against white people. Even more, a full accounting of the race based history of law enforcement, from the slave patrollers to modern police brutality, also should be taught at all police academies so that those who eventually join law enforcement can know better or at a minimum, not feign ignorance or act dumb when they are caught misbehaving in a deplorably racist manner.

Centennial of the Tulsa Massacre

Speaking of a full accounting of American history, be sure to look out for my essay, "The Tulsa Massacre, Revisited" this coming Sunday! As we mark the solemn centennial of that horrific event that left hundreds of Blacks dead and millions of dollars in property damaged or stolen, I also encourage you to check the listings for several documentaries that will air this weekend to commemorate an event that was hidden in plain sight for decades due to a racism insouciant American press—and a wholly inadequate educational system.

Check out the dates and here!

Tulsa circa June 1921

The African roots of Watermelon

As a budding historian during my early school days, I was often fascinated when history and science would intersect to tell fascinating cultural stories. I learned early on that watermelons, the succulent summer treat enjoyed by Americans of all races, was one that was first cultivated in Africa. A fact that is interesting when considering the racist stereotypes popularized during the Jim Crow era of Black caricatures eating watermelon and spitting seeds to signify not just the lazy, hazy days of summer, but to reinforce the astonishing lie that Black sharecroppers were shiftless and lazy!

This week, researchers with the National Academy of Sciences published a paper that argues that "the small, round Kordofan melon, native to the Kordofan region of Sudan, is much more closely genetically related to our modern watermelon."

While fascinating to learn of this specific origin, I admit that for the better part of my adult life that I have only eaten watermelon in the privacy of my home or office or at Black barbecues and social gatherings due to my own insecurities about the above-mentioned stereotypes. You see, when the legendary Hip-Hop artist KRS-One rapped on his seminal cut My Philosophy in 1988: “…like all my Brothers eat chicken and watermelon, talk broken English and drug selling,” his lyrics didn't stop me from eating chicken or watermelon, but it surely, perhaps sub-consciously, made me insecure about when and where I ate the same. Bizarre, I know, but real—thus my push to ensure that these facts are publicly taught to endow our younger Brothers and Sisters with the ability to discern facts from fiction in all things, including food choices. 

President Joe Biden on the Environment

For the majority of his 50 plus years in politics, President Joe Biden has been a middle to right of center politician. No matter how hard former President Donald Trump and his surrogates tried to paint Biden to be a liberal in the same vein as Senators Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, Biden's long record reveals the sheer falsity of this notion. A falsity that was at the root of the former administration's fear of a Biden candidacy and his appeal to moderate to slightly conservative white voters that shunned Hillary Clinton for Trump because there were many times in Biden's past, from busing opposition, to the Anita Hill confirmation quagmire, to war-mongering in the Middle East, when then Sen. Biden behaved or voted like a conservative.

For those reasons, I am not surprised by criticisms that the Biden administration is taking for energy policies that his left of center critics say are no different than those of his predecessor, Mr. Trump. So much so that this week, the Biden administration filed briefs in federal court defending an oil drilling program in Alaska called "The Willow Project"—one that was previously approved by the Trump administration. This comes only a few weeks after the Biden administration upheld support of Trump's provision of oil and gas leases in Wyoming—leases that were decried by progressive environmental activists then and now. 

To be fair, in his first days as president, Mr. Biden did overturn Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate while nixing the controversial Keystone pipeline. But it is clear that as we head into the fourth month of his administration, that Biden is trying to figure out how to balance the interests of oil and gas companies that are major parts of the American economic infrastructure now, with the interests of environmentalists and emerging green energy concerns that will become major parts of the American infrastructure in the future.

President Biden's balancing act will undoubtedly draw criticism from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the months ahead, which is crucial when considering that the 2022 mid-term elections are around the corner and to avoid a Republican congressional takeover, Democratic conservatives, moderates, and progressive alike will have to be able to coalesce into a united front once again—or else!

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